City page or local website design?
“I want to be found on Google. I have stores in three nearby cities where I show and sell the products that I manufacture in my home town. Should I make a local page or microsite for each city I’m selling in?”
The answer to the question is, Yes. however, the question actually addresses two separate topics and opportunities; Google Maps and Google Search Results.
On Google Maps, Google wants you to prove that you serve customers at each location in order to add the locations to Google maps, and thus to the local pack.
It’s undeniable that stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns as a result of the coronavirus are going to influence shopping habits for quite some time. Many local businesses now offer contact-less delivery, curbside pickup, and sanitizing stations. It is because of this, that local SEO still presents an opportunity to reach a new set of customers.
For Google Search Results, they want your page to be THE BEST result for web searchers. So it stands to reason that having an informative, quality website gives you an opportunity to rank organically.
To come up in local searches requires the same efforts as ranking in your home city for your primary website:
- write high quality, relevant web page content
- attract high-value links to your page(s) from relevant websites
- encourage engagement and activity within your website
- encourage and respond to reviews
- in addition to verifying your business through Google My Business if you wish to get on the map and in the local pack.
Google’s actual ranking factors list is incredibly long and secret, but these items are the core factors every business should focus on.
When going the local page or city page route, it is vitally important that the site(s) be just as accurate and helpful to the prospective customer as your main site, and not just a duplicate, with useful content and information for your local customer.
It is possible to run an advertisement in the local pack. In such a scenario, having a local or city page won’t change that. While quicker, the drawback, of course, is that the moment you stop paying for the advertising, your listing will disappear from the local pack.
HubSpot recently published some incredible local business stats (I suspect you could safely replace “visit a store” with “contact a store” throughout):
- 88% of consumers who perform local searches on their mobile phones visit or call a store within one day
- 46% of all Google searches are performed with the intent to seek local information
- 72% of consumers who perform searches for local businesses visit stores within five miles of their location
Can I make a local website design or city page on wpSites?
Absolutely. You can create a single-page site, a micro-site, and even landing pages on wpSites. Create a local page or whatever pages you need on your site right now.